Guided Reading Strategies to Improve Students - Dr. Stirling ...

HOW WOULD STUDENTS REACT TO BEING GROUPED ACCORDING TO ABILITY?The researcher explained what kinds of books and the specific kinds of activitiesstudents would be doing. For example, the Warriors were students who liked longerchapter books with challenging vocabulary and who created more detailed kindsof writing. The White Buffalos read shorter books including a few collections ofcreation stories with some new words; they enjoyed shorter writing tasks. TheWigwams were those students who liked reading a short story, learning a few newwords, and who were capable of writing good answers with fewer details. Thestudents readily accepted these explanations, and they were keen to get started.HOW COULD STUDENTS BE MOTIVATED TO THINK CRITICALLY AT THE END OF THEDAY? WOULD THEY BE ABLE TO STAY ON TASK IN THEIR GROUPS, AND AT TIMESWORK INDEPENDENTLY?Because the Guided Reading groups were small, the materials for this unitconsisted of picture books borrowed from the Public Library system. Students weregiven books to read at their independent level, ranging from Grade 3.3 to 5.9. Thepaintings on the covers were very appealing. Checklists were created for each legendso students could self-monitor the tasks they had completed. Tasks weredeveloped for before, during and after reading. These tasks provided opportunitiesfor lots of discussion, vocabulary building, writing answers to higher-levelquestions, and creating products such as songs, drawings, and puppet plays.Several graphic organizers were used including:• a K-W-L chart to gather information about C. J. Taylor,• pictures with lines for quick writes to determine students’ backgroundknowledge,• prediction and confirmation charts,• Venn diagrams and charts to compare characters, and• webs to categorize kinds of legends.Questioning included a limited number of basic recall-type questions. Instead, theresearcher focused on more open-ended questions and posed several kinds ofhigher-level questions that encouraged students to:• make predictions by giving evidence from the text and picture clues,• relate legends to their own experience,• apply what they had learned about a character to their own lives,• raise questions as they read,• identify the author’s message,• determine meaning by reading and writing words in context,• draw conclusions at the end of the legends,• evaluate favorite legends and paintings, and• answer lots of why do you think… questions.This line of questioning kept students interested and challenged. Discussions werelively and students had to think more critically. The researcher took turnsworking with each group, and observations were recorded.RESEARCH REPORT: Guided Reading Strategies to Improve Students’ Critical Thinking Skills in Grades Three, Four and Five17